


Incandescent

by hitlikehammers



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Other, Power Outage, Romance, relationship dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 10:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cold night by the fire.</p><p> </p><p>  <span class="small">For <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/snogandagrope/profile">snogandagrope</a>, including, as requested: Power outages; Nests of blankets in front of the fire; Cuddling by candlelight; Eating cold Chinese before it goes off; Is it too cold for ice cream? It’s going to spoil if we don’t eat it; Mary putting knit hats on the boys to keep them warm, which creates static kisses.</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Incandescent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snogandagrope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snogandagrope/gifts).



> For [snogandagrope's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/snogandagrope/profile) prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _Johnlockary, power cut, nest of all the blankets and pillows in front of the fire, cuddling by candlelight, eating cold Chinese before it goes off, is it too cold for ice cream? it’s going to spoil if we don’t eat it, Mary putting knit hats on the boys to keep them warm, which creates static kisses._
> 
>  
> 
> _Any or all of the above, pleaseandthankyou._
> 
>  
> 
> Neither beta'd nor Britpicked, though my thanks to snog for catching some typos when she perused her gift! <3

“Sherlock.”

Mary’s standing at the end of the sofa that contains, at the very least, the flesh and blood of a consulting detective.

“Love, he’s not going to answer,” John warns from the kitchen, where he’s sorting through the freezer and salvaging what he can—warns, because the flesh and blood of the detective’s right in front of her, but he’s staring in that way he has, sightless and unblinking, and god only knows where that mind of his has run off to.

“Sherlock, can I ask you something?” Mary tries, “It’s important, I promise.”

“Sweetling, really, he can’t hear you,” John tells her tiredly. “He’s got the eye-glaze thing going on,” John sneaks a peek over toward them, and yep, that’s exactly the blank-stare that’s scared the fuck out of him more than once. “He’s not just ignoring you, he’s legitimately tuned out.”

Mary straightens, switches tactics.

“Sherlock, the fingers!” she cries out, despairing. “In the fridge! I’ve binned them!”

The eyes blink, blink—blinks thrice before they clear, before those shoulder twitch and the mouth turns down and Sherlock snaps:

“ _What_?”

“There we are,” Mary grins, satisfied. “Are you aware you’re staring at a screen that’s not on?” She nods to the black display of the laptop balanced precariously on Sherlock’s knees.

“My research!” He pokes at the keyboard, trying to wake it before he shakes the machine, a touch frantic. 

“I’ve told you not to let the battery get that low,” she chides gently, rescuing the computer, dead as it is, from his clutches and stowing it on the bookshelf. “Good thing _I_ remembered to run your updates and you’ll have all of it auto-recovered, isn’t it?” she gives herself permission to gloat, just a tad, as she leans down to press lips to Sherlock’s temple, easing his sullen frown as he turns to squint at her in the growing dark.

“Power’s out, love,” she tells him, and the wordless huff she gets in return says _Obvious_ more than anything could—it doesn’t faze her, though, not anymore.

“And I took the fingers to the clinic last week to get rid of them, _properly_ ,” she smirks. “They were absolutely going off.”

The frown comes back, the little wrinkle between his brows: and it’s so damned _endearing_.

“Then you’ll just have to get me new ones,” he pouts, and she laughs.

“Negotiable,” she concedes. “Help me with these pillows.”

He glances toward the fluffy pile at her feet, a question in his eyes.

“Body heat only goes so far,” she tells him. “And the fire’ll help, but it’s dipping down to the negatives outside,” she shivers involuntarily, and grins when Sherlock’s arm reaches for hers, as he rubs to the elbow and back to warm her.

She grabs his hand and laces his fingers in hers; squeezes; pulls him up from his seat.

“So, up you get. We need to keep as warm as we can.”

He sighs, deeply. 

But he does as he’s told.

The fire crackles nicely as he arranges the pillows near it: two large piles and a smaller one in the middle. He picks up a bit of newsprint and tosses it at the flames; watches, mesmerised, as it crumbles, turns to ash.

“These blankets,” Sherlock turns when Mary reenters the room, arms full of sheets and a familiar duvet. “They smell like,” Mary wrinkles her nose—considers.

“Dead skin cells and perspiration?” Sherlock huffs irritably. “Yes, that’s because you’ve just ripped them off my bed.”

“Calvin Klein?” she smartly ignores him.

“Burberry,” John calls at her over the pile of linens in his arms. “He’s wearing Burberry now.”

“Ooo,” Mary croons with only a hint—just a _hint_ —of mocking, just enough to prompt a bit of a flush on those impossible cheekbones. “Fancy, you are,” she leans his way and bumps him with her shoulder, tossing him a wink.

That pale skin blushes rose, and her grin grows all the wider.

“Mmm,” Mary buries her face in Sherlock’s bedding and inhales deeply: “Woodsy.” 

She stretches up on her toes to press close to him and take a sniff at the underside of his jaw; revels in the way he stiffens, the way the tip of her nose catches the sudden swell of his pulse at the neck of her way back down.

“Smells better on—”

“Yes,” Sherlock mumbles, turns away and gets all flappy with his hands, which Mary will never _not_ find adorable. “Well, human pheromones do alter the—”

“The sheets, I was going to say,” Mary deadpans, and he swivels to pierce her with those eyes with a dizzying kind of speed. “Smells better on the sheets.”

He stares. He frowns.

She giggles.

“Joking!” she says in earnest when his eyes start to harden, just a little. “Only joking, love.” And she kisses his cheek, still warm with a flush, and doesn’t pull away until she feels his lips curl, just a tad.

“Smells better on you,” John’s voice comes from Sherlock’s other side, where Mary sees him nuzzling just below Sherlock’s ear as he purrs: “Promise.”

The pleased hum that escapes the body between them is—they’d decided long before—the most gorgeous thing either of them has ever heard.

“Candles, yeah?” Mary says as she pulls away and goes, no doubt, to raid her unnatural, indefensibly _immense_ collection of scented tealights.

And votives.

And jars.

And pillars.

“Oh god,” Sherlock laments as he leans into John, who’s still nosing his jaw. “Not the evergreen one.”

“You nixed a tree,” Mary yells from down the hall. “This was your compromise!”

“My punishment, you mean,” Sherlock calls back, before groaning under his breath: “It’s not even December anymore,” he grumble, petulant.

“Waste not, want not, Sherlock Holmes,” John murmurs as he mouths, just a tad bit wanton along Sherlock’s skin.

“You hate the scent of it, too,” Sherlock reminds him, but the irritation’s seeping away with every sloppy kiss John leaves along his neck. “Bloody _pine_.”

“Mmm,” John’s voice shivers down the line of Sherlock’s throat, and the way John peers up at him through golden lashes sends heat and joy through Sherlock’s chest, though his veins, down his limbs: “Maybe a bit.”

“Mmmm,” Sherlock hums, and when John tucks close against his chest, Sherlock wraps an arm around him, pulls him all the closer. 

“A mistake,” he exhales softly, and it’s a credit to them both, to them all, when John doesn’t tense, doesn’t fret.

“Mistake?” he asks innocently, tracing the tip of his nose across Sherlock’s chest, catching the breath in Sherlock’s lungs when he lingers over the tightening bud of a nipple beneath Sherlock’s shirt. “This?”

Sherlock breathes out slowly, stuttering, as his eyes flutter against the sensation, and if John sees him shake his head, it’s superfluous anyway: Sherlock’s heart is pumping harder than it needs to, and his embrace only tightens with every beat.

“Letting you discover that this,” Sherlock gasps out, “can undo me so easily.” He shivers as John moves to the dip between his clavicles, licks at his suprasternal pulse.

“Sentiment,” Sherlock breathes, and he can’t even mean for it to sound disapproving, to sound sour on his tongue: not here. Not like this.

“Oh yes, sentiment,” and that’s Mary, deadpanning: back in the kitchen, flicking a lighter and catching the wick of the green clump of wax in a jar. “S’done you no favours whatsoever.” 

Mary grins as Sherlock turns his nose up at her, props his chin atop John’s head and doesn’t bother with stifling the incandescence of his grin.

“Not a one.”

She snorts, and drops the blankets near the pillows before wandering back toward the kitchen.

“Ooo, ice cream!” she grabs for the container sitting out on the counter—John had gone through the foods most likely to spoil while the power was out and left them out as free game, but he looks at her like she’s grown an extra head when she grabs for the Ben & Jerry’s.

“Too cold,” John tells her firmly, but she laughs him off.

“Never!” Her fortitude only lasts until she dips her finger into the tub, puts it to her lips, and licks: she does her very best to make it sultry, but it’s ruined a bit when she squeals, as soon as the frigid cream hits her teeth, and she moans, wretched: “Oh, _fuck_ me.”

“Told you,” John laughs, sympathetic as he can manage.

“Fucking—” Mary squints against the sting of the chill before she straightens.

“Right. Fire. Blankets. Body heat.” Her eyes roam across the food-littered countertop. “And Chinese,” she gathers up the days-old takeaway boxes and leads the way to the pillows on the floor.

John shrugs helplessly, his grin boyish as he follows.

Sherlock, for reasons he cannot quantify or properly defend, stays put. Watches them. Marvels for a long minute that for all that’s happened, for all he’s done and deserves and absolutely doesn’t: for all of the hurt and the want and the waiting, there is this. 

Somehow, beyond probability, the impossible happened.

Somehow, this is _his_.

“Do you require an engraved invitation, Sir Holmes?” Mary asks playfully, shaking him from his musings as she pats the space between John’s body and her own in invitation. “You’ll freeze all the way over there.” 

He crosses the distance, settles in the warmth of them—two people, two friends, two lovers, two hearts— _his_ , upon the centre pile of pillows in front of a fire in the dark. 

“That’s not yours,” John says over Sherlock’s head as Mary bites into a piece of John’s leftover Kung Po Chicken.

She scrunches her face, pinches another piece of sauce-smeared meat between her chopsticks, and flings it towards John’s face.

Her resounding _awww_ of sheer disappointment as he catches it in his mouth and chews, smug as anything, coaxes a laugh from Sherlock’s throat, deep and honest, and it lights up all three of their faces, all three of them basking just a tad inside its warmth.

“Oh,” Mary exclaims suddenly, popping out from her blankets and jumping to her feet. “I forgot!” She rubs her hands together and cups, blows into them as heads for the bedroom.

“Not another candle,” Sherlock groans, and John chuckles, leaning into him, kissing his throat and sighing into his skin.

“Ready to give up your room for a lab yet?” John asks against his neck. It’s been an ongoing discussion that never really occurs between them—Sherlock spends so few nights sleeping as it is, and he whiles away enough of the evening hours in John and Mary’s bed that he thinks the point mostly moot in practice, it’s not mere practicality that keeps him from officially relocating to the upstairs bed.

He sighs, and he can feel John tense just a tad against him, and John’s already moving to take back his question, to regret bringing it up at all, when Sherlock whispers, tone intent:

“You’re sure?”

Because that’s the question. He wants John. He wants Mary. He wants them, desperately. With him, here. Forever.

He wants a lab, too. Very much.

But what he wants most is not to lose them, not to take a step too far, too soon, too large and sweeping: to overreach, as he is wont to do, and to sacrifice what is in the wanting of more. To emerge with nothing for the attempt.

John’s hand is on his face, watching him with a careful determination, a burning sort of affection that curls in Sherlock’s stomach and makes him feel weak and strong all at once.

“We’ll talk to Mrs. Hudson in the morning about ordering a King bed,” John says simply, before he leans in, and kisses Sherlock with an infinite care, a passion that strokes at Sherlock’s heart and sends it shaking, pounding, aching as he leans into John and emanates—drinks in—sheer _joy_.

“Getting started already, are we?” Mary interjects saucily, winking as they part. She crouches down in front of them, snagging a blanket from the pile and wrapping herself in it before reaching for John and pulling a wool hat down over John’s ears.

“Oh!” John grins at her, adjusting it on his head. “Is this what you’ve been knitting so sneakily?”

“It certainly is,” she answers, leaning it to give him a peck on the lips.

The static spark that flies between their lips is visible, audible: sends them both jumping back, rubbing their mouths.

“Shit!” Mary laughs through her fingertips before sobering a bit, and turning to Sherlock.

She’s more careful, situating the hat over his curls, letting the braided flaps dangle to the bobbles at the ends, hanging just at his shoulders.

“How does it fit?” she asks, but Sherlock barely hears her. Because it’s a hat. And it’s a bit ridiculous. And her eyes are warm, and expectant, and sparkling, and it’s beautiful, and she’s looking at him like he’s worth a great deal: worth warmth and a fire and cramped fingers around knitting needles and fingers in the fridge and a space in her bed and on her shoulder for his hat-clad head at night—it’s a bit ridiculous.

She made a hat for _him_.

“S’blue,” Mary adds, soft, affectionate, and hopeful, somehow: “To match your scarf.”

Sherlock inhales, and his throat’s very tight. He exhales, and there’s worry in her gaze for a moment, just a moment, but a moment’s too long, and he leans down to her, cups her cheek in his hand and breathes with all the sincerity he possesses, all the feeling he cannot articulate but can try, can try _ardently_ to infuse:

“Thank you.”

And when he kisses her, it’s slow and telling, and just because there’s no spark to be seen doesn’t mean there’s not one there.

Her smile is his favourite thing, in that moment. In the moments that follow until he stretches, shifts, pulls Mary down between John and himself and wraps around her, catches John’s hand in his own at Mary’s hip, and then there are two favourites, two halves of his oft-questioned soul.

The fire flickers, and Sherlock’s never seen anything brighter, anything more luminescent than the two bodies, the two beings beside him: cast in firelight, the breath in their lungs clouding soft in the air, the rise of their chests like orchestral direction, conducting the light in his mind and the swell, the heat spreading swift around his heart.

His eyes drift closed: John’s hand twined in his own, Mary’s lips at the base of his neck.

For all the cold that presses inward, he knows nothing but the warmth.


End file.
